What do students think about SNS in education? University students’ perceptions, expectations and concerns regarding educational uses of SNS

Abstract

Social network sites (SNS) have become a popular technology topic in recent years and are currently used in educational environments. Although SNS have attracted much scholarly attention, students’ experiences with and expectations about SNS uses in education have not been deeply explored. This study investigates educational uses of SNS by analyzing university students’ perceptions, experiences, expectations, and concerns. A mixed method approach was used. The participants were 206 Turkish university students aged 18-28. As a quantitative data collection tool, “the social networking use survey” was employed. To better understand the students’ perceptions, expectations, and concerns about using SNS for educational purposes, face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 58 participants. The results of the study reveal that the students actively used SNS for different purposes. The participants also exhibited positive perceptions of SNS use for educational purposes. Among the biggest expectations is that instructors would share materials using SNS. When the students’ general expectations were examined, notably different results were obtained. The greatest concern of the students was that their posts could be seen by their instructors. All of the research findings are discussed in a detailed manner.